~Stop Dawdling,sweeties!~

In this blog, I am not totally focusing on ENGLISH, but also sharing some useful information using language medium which is ENGLISH.  Let's move to more general and interesting topics. Now, I am going to talk about DAWDLING CHILDREN. What is dawdling?

Dawdling can be defined as taking more time than necessary. Children always have this kind of problem as they are not conscious of time and easily distracted.

"hurry up!"

"faster!"

"let's go!"

These are some examples of words that parents always used to make their child stop dawdling. If the parents not yell these kind of words, children might continuously dawdling and taking more and more time to get ready. Unfortunately, this situation can make parents become depressed and easily get angry because of their children are taking longer time to get ready or doing anything. There are some reasons on why the dawdling happens.

1. They can be easily distracted by surrounding such as television, games, toys and storybooks. 

2. They love procrastination as they think that time is not important.

3. They don’t have much responsibility or things to think compared to adult. What they know is enjoying everything around them.  That is why children always do everything slowly. 

So, how we cope with this kind of problem? Here, i suggest some ways that can be helpful for parents as well as teacher if they are facing dawdled students especially from primary school. 

                           1. Limited and specific instructions

Make sure that children follow your instruction and never repeat the instructions again and again. Train the children to hear your instructions to avoid them neglect you on first time the instruction was given. Instead of say "hurry up!", parents or teacher are encouraged to be more specific like "please  wear your clothes now and come here in 5minutes". In classroom settings, teacher can instruct them by say "finish your works before the class end, if not, you are not allowed to go home!” By giving a specific instruction, the dawdled children will focus on their work and finish earlier.

2. Avoid distractions

  Make sure that the children focus only on your instructions not to other      things like toys, games or television. Turn off the television and keep away all the toys and games. You may hold their hands and look at their eyes to show that you are serious.  It is also important to make them pay attention 100% on you.

3. Motivation

Motivation is very useful to drive someone to do something or achieve their goals. In dawdling issue, external or extrinsic motivation is helpful to push the children do the tasks in a short time instead of taking longer time for simple tasks. Parents can offer children’s favorite foods like pizza, burger or Kentucky Fried Chicken. In example, “you can eat this pizza once you finish your homework”. For teachers, you may say “I will give you stars if you finish all the exercises”. As the result, children are motivated to do their works and not procrastinated.